Estate Planning

Our estate planning attorneys assist clients with diverse backgrounds, assets and goals. We pride ourselves on custom tailoring each estate plan to fit the needs of the client while providing the best tax planning possible. In addition, we explain the complexities of the estate and gift tax laws so the client understands the estate planning documents. Our clients range in net worth from a few million dollars to well over $1billion, and we have the experience, creativity and expertise to craft plans of all levels of sophistication.

Our attorneys prepare wills, living trusts, advance health care directives, durable powers of attorney for financial matters, deeds transferring real estate and all types of irrevocable trusts (gift trusts, life insurance trusts, generation-skipping trusts, education trusts, grantor trusts, grantor retained annuity trusts, qualified personal residence trusts, charitable remainder and charitable lead trusts). We believe that our clients should be able to understand all of the documents we prepare for them. To this end, we adopt a writing style intended to be “user-friendly” even while negotiating complex tax issues, and we provide our clients with explanations and instructions to assist in the continued management of a trust.

We also advise clients on international estate planning, private charitable foundations and other charitable giving techniques, LLC and other entity formation, property tax reassessment issues, business succession planning, asset protection planning, and the often-overlooked issue of preparing the next generation for handling wealth. When appropriate, we coordinate with our clients’ other professionals (accountants, investment advisors, business managers, etc.), to maximize efficiency. In short, we consider ourselves true “counselors” to our clients.

Our extensive and positive relationships with other professionals (accountants, insurance brokers, trust companies, investment advisors and the like) add to our strong reputation to make our estate planners some of the most highly acclaimed attorneys in California.